I do everything by hand. I go to Google Adwords Keyword Tool to find the amount of searches, average cost per click, and related keywords. I go to google.com to find the amount of competition (with and without quotes).

And if I care how many backlinks a competitor has, I use Yahoo Site Explorer.

It takes me like 2 minutes to determine if a niche is worthwhile or not.

I hear about all these programs like Market Samurai, Matt's Keyword Tool, etc., but I don't understand what those tools do that I'm not doing by hand already?

I used a few of them about a year ago and found that the results I got from a few of those tools were less accurate than what I got doing it manually, so I said "F it" and deleted them and went back to doing it manually. It's possible that in the last year or so they've improved.

So is there anything I am missing out on by not using these tools? If so, what am I missing out on and what tool will do that for me?

It's not even like it takes a lot of time to do it by hand. It takes like 2 minutes, sometimes 5 minutes if I get distracted by youtube or porn in the meantime. So it's not like it's some huge automation feature that reduces hours of work down to seconds or anything.

I'm not trying to be a dick or say that SEO tools are worthless, I just feel like I'm missing a huge piece of the puzzle when it comes to understanding how they are used.

No, I completely agree with you. Your methods are correct, and not everyone knows how to do that. Some of us are SEO newbs, remember that! Market Samurai does a bit more than that (of what I am not sure, go read their page if interested), but not that much more than what you do.

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